wanderlust: Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk

You're a great walk. Ha ha! Anyway, it was time for a Great Walk. Yes, all in capitals. The Lake Waikaremoana (come on, say it three times fast!) Great Walk is in the Gisborne region and located in the south-west corner of the 212,673 hectare Te Urewera National Park. It's a 46 kilometre tramping track which follows the shore of the lake for most of its length. Yay! It was quite a drive--taking about 6 hours going though Rotoroa and then down a lovely windy dirt road to the Lake Waikaremoana Motor Camp, finally getting there at about 10pm. Josh had booked a tourist flat, which included linens, towels, and an ensuite bathroom...however, when we opened the door to the room that they left us a key for, we found a cold bunkroom with none of those amenities. Brr. Josh went to ask the folks in charge if we could actually get the room we booked, but they were not happy about being woken up and just said that 'you have your sleeping bags, right?' That was silly.
We woke up to rain, but it wasn't too bad and was supposed to clear, so off to the track we go!
It was a bit too wet to have my camera out a lot, so not a lot of pictures on the way up...
Here's a poster in the shelter at the beginning of the track, talking about the creation of the lake.

Josh in silhouette.

The track leads through the former Armed Constabulary Redoubt and climbs steadily up to the top of Panekire Bluff. It then follows the undulating ridge line before reaching Puketapu Trig (at 1180 metres).

Views of the lake going up up up the track!

Here's a picture of the lake on a good day. Pretty, huh? Much more mysterious when we saw it all shrouded in mist and cloud...

We stopped at the Panekire Hut for lunch, and it was cold up there. Josh took this picture cause he said that my lips were blue, but it didn't turn out in the picture.

Here's some snow in the middle of the ferns.

The walk traverses a range of terrain with lots of vegetation from the montane beech forest of the Panekire Bluffs to dense rainforest. Podocarp mixed broadleaf forest is dominant in many areas. Fun stuff, huh?

Lots of black swans and other birds were all over the lake.

The first day we hiked up to the second hut, which took about 7 hours total. When we got to the Waiopaoa Hut, we found a school group of 18 kids, (all in their last year, the class is something like Outdoor education, and they get to tramp, and mountain bike and kayak all year!) and their two teachers, a super toasty fire. All in all, a very lovely night.
That morning we headed out, taking a side track to a waterfall, but when we were almost there it turns out that there was a cable going over the river. Monika, our Slovakian friend, was the brave one to head across the river. Josh and I were wussies and didn't want to hike in wet boots for the next five hours. Monika showed us her pretty pictures, though. She did end up in water to her thighs. Eeks.

Gorgeous river views.

There were pretty purple mushrooms on the trail. It doesn't show up properly on the photo, but it was seriously violet. Love it.

More pretty lake views.

Whoa!!! Blue skies! After the first day, we actually had beautiful weather. It was awesome.

Josh loving his pretty waterfalls.

That afternoon we got to the Waiharuru hut, which was huge and spacious, but the damn gas heater wasn't working. And it was cold! After we had a nice dinner with Monika, and talked to the other couple staying in the hut (Cherie was from NZ, and Ian was from Scotland/Great Britain...I love that accent!), and then I jumped in my warm sleeping bag by about 7pm. But not before we saw the beautiful moon over the lake!

Woke up and headed out for the last 4 hours of the track (which ended up only taking 3).

Here's our hiking buddy. Monika made the 3 hours go pretty fast by entertaining us with some of her funny traveling stories.

Then we waited at the end of the track for our ride, nice and smelly!
Josh and I drove to Gisborne that afternoon, listened to Josh's book on tape, and saw lots of pretty landscape. We got to the hotel and I REALLY loved the hot bath/shower that I had after 4 days of no showers... then we met Monika for a very lovely dinner at a little Italian place called the Fettuccine Brothers. YUM!